There have been so far proposed many methods for automatically issuing an alarm by detecting a person or a vehicle from an image taken by a camera and analyzing the activities thereof.
Specific techniques for performing the above described method include, for example, a technique disclosed in Non-Patent Document 2 (“A System for Video Surveillance and Monitoring” tech. report CMU-RI-TR-00-12, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, May, 2000.) and a technique used in the product, called VEW, of ObjectVideo, Inc.
According to these techniques, it is possible to issue an alarm by automatically detecting an illegal activity or prohibited activity such as when a person or a vehicle intrudes into a zone designated as no-admittance, and when a person or a vehicle crosses a dividing line which the person or vehicle is prohibited from crossing.
However these techniques have a problem in that an alarm will be issued as a prohibited activity as an illegal activity even for a person or vehicle having an authorization as in the case of an ordinary person and vehicle, for example, when a relevant person authorized to enter a zone of “No Admittance without Authorization” or enters the region of “No Admittance without Authorization”, when an ambulance car enters an intersection during a red light, and the like.
On the other hand, various usage forms of RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) are known as an authentication device and are being applied to, for example, entrance and exit control in which the authority to access a building or office is authenticated by RFID and the gate is opened to admit a person or vehicle who/which has been authenticated as having authority to enter through the gate.
Further, when only personnel are targeted, there are also known methods which utilize biometric authentication based on face, fingerprint, vein, or iris feature.
However, in a surveillance system which utilizes RFID alone, since the absence of a RFID response is equivalent to no occurrence of event, a problem exists in that a sufficient surveillance function cannot be achieved unless all the personnel to be monitored carry RFID with them, and therefore the application range of such a system is limited.
It is difficult to achieve an effective surveillance system by using RFID alone particularly in a region or public area such as a lobby of a building, a railway station, and an air port etc. where there are many people who do not carry RFID with themselves.
Moreover, a similar problem exists even in the case of biometric authentication, and it is necessary to support an environment a situation in which all the personnel to be monitored can be authenticated, resulting in a large burden on data management.
Further, there is also a problem in which it is not possible to perform detailed analysis of a person or vehicle to be monitored only by RFID or biometric authentication, and in which it is only possible to perform a coarse surveillance such as monitoring at what time and through which gate the person or vehicle has passed, and at what time and in which place the person or vehicle is present, and the like.
For example, Patent Document 1 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-127142) discloses a method in which the validity of a person who enters a predetermined space is determined by authenticating a person which has authority to enter/utilize the space by using an IC card and the like; however, this technique has a problem in that it is only possible to determine the validity of the entrance of a particular person into a particular place, and not possible to determine the validity of the activity of a particular person or vehicle at a particular place.
Patent Document 2 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-11057) discloses a method in which the accuracy is enhanced by combining an image surveillance and sensor surveillance such as RFID.
According to the technique of Patent Document 2, it is possible to obtain detailed dynamic information of a person or object etc., which cannot be recognized only through image information taken by a camera etc.
Further, according to the technique of Patent Document 2, since every person is supposed to possess a RFID tag in a place such as a corporate site, when a person is detected but there is no response of RFID, it is possible to regard the person as a suspicious person thereby issuing an alarm.
However, since this technique utilizes only the information about simply whether or not a subject to be monitored possesses a RFID tag or GPS terminal, and does not authenticate a subject who has authorization, it is difficult to perform precise alarm control such as follows.
That is, there is a problem in which an alarm is erroneously issued even for a person who has authorization because of the absence of applying precise surveillance policies that correspond to this authorization, such as: when a person is authorized to enter any place, the person is excluded from the subject to be monitored and no alarm will be issued; when a person is permitted to enter only a particular area, entering non-permitted area will be regarded as an illegal activity, and an alarm will be issued; when a person is not permitted entry at all or does not possess a RFID tag, alarm is to be generated as soon as the person is detected; even when a person traveling in the opposite direction is detected on a path on which traveling in the opposite direction is prohibited, an alarm will not be issued if the person has a specific authorization to travel in the opposite direction; even when a person traveling in the opposite direction is detected on a path on which traveling in the opposite direction is prohibited, an alarm will not be issued if the person has a specific authorization to travel in the opposite direction; even when a person standing still is detected on a path on which standing still is prohibited, alarm will not be issued if a person has a specific authorization to stand still.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-127142,    Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-11057,    Non-Patent Document 2: “A System for Video Surveillance and Monitoring” tech. report CMU-RI-TR-00-12, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, May, 2000.